The present invention relates generally to the art of applying a plurality of transfers simultaneously to a plurality of packages, and more particularly to the application of tax stamps, labels, ink imprints, or the like to individual packages of cigarettes in a carton without removing the packages from the carton.
The tax revenue on the sale of cigarettes has become a major source of income for many states and local governments which, to insure payment of the appropriate taxes, require that revenue stamps or transfers be applied to each package of cigarettes before that package is sold at a retail outlet to the general public. The required tax stamps or transfers are usually mounted on long sheets or webs in the form of rolls which are then sold by the state or local government to the wholesale distributors of the cigarettes. The distributors must then open the cartons in which the cigarette packages are normally enclosed by the manufacturer and the tax stamps or transfers must then be applied from the supply sheet to each package in the carton. The carton must then be reclosed and resealed for distribution to retail outlets.
Because the tax stamps are purchased by the roll, it is important to the distributor that each stamp on the roll be properly applied to the cigarette package so that stamps are not wasted. This means that they must be accurately positioned on the ends of the cigarette packages and, in order to avoid high labor costs, this must be done as rapidly as possible. A large number of machines have been devised for expediting this process, and such machines have provided substantial savings over the costs of manually applying the tax stamps or transfers, and thus have been highly successful. These machines have been designed to handle one or the other of the two basic processes which have evolved and which are now principally used in the application of tax stamps to cigarette packages; namely, the wet ink process, and the decalcomania transfer process. Thus, many of the presently available machines transfer the required imprinting to the cigarette packages by a wet ink process, wherein a desired pattern is printed on each package by means of a suitable inked printing head or by means of an inked transfer sheet, while other machines utilize decals or transferable patterns which are mounted on a backing sheet and which may be transferred to the cigarette packages through the application of heat or a solvent such as water. Although the present invention is equally applicable to ink-type stamping machines, its principle application is to the decal-type of transfer stamp, and will be described with respect thereto.
The decal process, as presently in use in the industry, utilizes a backing sheet with a plurality of transfers, which may be referred to herein as tax stamps, mounted thereon. The stamps are mounted in lateral rows of fifteen and are spaced approximately 3/4 of an inch apart, center to center. A multiplicity of rows extend the length of the sheet, the stamps in adjacent rows also being spaced center to center by about 3/4 inch. These sheets are supplied in rolls and in a stamp applying machine, the rolls are advanced to expose pairs of rows of stamps to the transfer mechanism thereof for transferring selected stamps to corresponding packages of cigarettes. Since each carton of cigarettes contains 10 packages, five in each of two rows, only one-third of the stamps in each row of stamps are transferred to the packages in a given carton, and two adjacent rows therefore contain enough tax stamps for three cartons of cigarettes. The arrangement of these sheets and their manner of application to successive cartons of conventional cigarette packages are illustrated, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,616 to Davis, and in particular FIG. 12 thereof.
Decal sheets and the machines for using them have been standard for many years. Such machines typically provide a mechanism for advancing the carton through an opener station where the carton is opened, through a stamping station where the required tax stamp or indicia is applied, and finally through a reclosing station where the carton is closed and sealed. The variety of machines available for this purpose is illustrated by the teachings of U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,516,783 to Matter, 2,216,884 to Kott, 2,574,087 to Burhans, 2,595,122 to Burhans, 3,121,300 to Rossi, and by many others. Each of these patents discloses a mechanism for opening and resealing cartons of cigarettes and for applying a tax stamp of some kind to the packages while the carton is open.
Many of the machines developed in this art, particularly those produced in the earlier years, were designed to accommodate a single size of carton having cigarette packages of a standard size, for virtually all cigarettes sold were of a single size and were wrapped in standard packages. When the "king" size and "imperial" size cigarettes were introduced, it was found that many of the earlier machines could not handle them, and it became necessary to modify the machines or to replace them if manual application of the stamps was to be avoided. Later machines, therefore, were produced to accommodate these larger cigarette package sizes, and were made adjustable to permit the machine to selectively handle the various sizes available on the market. Such a machine is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,616 to Davis, mentioned above. However, the design changes in these machines were made principally to enable them to handle cigarettes of various lengths, the remaining dimensions of the cigarettes, and thus of the packages, remaining essentially unchanged and requiring no modifications.
The machines of the prior art generally required that the cigarette cartons be disposed so that the packages of cigarettes were upright, and adapting them to accommodate longer lengths involved very substantial modifications in the machines, since such accommodation generally required changing the vertical distance between the conveyor mechanism and the stamp applying mechanism. Many machines were stretched to their limit of adaptability by the king sized cigarettes, which are approximately 100 millimeters long. Since the width and depth of each cigarette package remained essentially unchanged for king-size cigarettes, however, it was unnecessary to modify the tax stamping mechanism for such machines.
With the advent of the hard box packing for cigarettes, and with the advent of hard filters, the requirements for package dimensions changed slightly, the ends of the new package being slightly wider and slightly deeper than the standard 21/8.times.77/8 inch packages. This small change in dimension did not seriously affect the operation of prior machines since the overall size of a carton did not change sufficiently to remove the packages from the range of the tax stamp applying mechanism, although with these new packages the stamps were no longer uniformly positioned on the ends of all of the packages in a carton. Thus, the prior art machines have been able to accommodate to many of the previous changes in cigarette styles without encountering significant difficulty, and various improvements have been made to increase the speed of operation of such machines so that satisfactory performance has been maintained. However, because such machines had been constructed to handle cigarette cartons in a specified way, they had only limited adjustability, and that limitation prevented such machines from being adapted to the most recent evolutions in cigarette styles.
The recently introduced extra long cigarettes, which are 120 millimeters or more long, are also slimmer than prior cigarettes, and result in a package which is considerably narrower than the standard size, although its depth is approximately the same. Thus, the dimensions of the ends of the packages are 1 13/16.times.13/16 inch as opposed to the 21/8.times.7/8 inch size of the standard package. When these new cigarettes are packaged in a carton of ten in the conventional manner, the length of the carton is reduced by almost an inch, and such cartons cannot be accepted in the old style stamp applying machines. Not only are the cigarettes too long to fit into most of the machines, but the smaller dimensions of the package ends, where the stamps are to be applied, prevents the packages from being aligned by the conventional machines with the tax stamps on a standard roll of stamps. Thus, for example, where a standard carton top or bottom might measure 103/4 inches.times.17/8 inches, the new 120 millimeter cigarette cartons measure approximately 9 5/16 inch.times.15/8 inch. Since this difference in length is greater than the distance between adjacent stamps on a decal roll, it has not been possible to utilize conventional machines for the application of stamps to these cigarette packages. Thus, it has been necessary either to place the stamps on the packages by hand, an extremely expensive procedure as compared to the usual machine operation, or to incorporate spacers in the cartons to separate the packages, again an expensive procedure which is wasteful of material and which adds an additional complication to the packaging methods used at the factory.
Because the 120 millimeter length cigarettes had only a small share of the overall cigarette market, it was not economical for machine manufacturers to rebuild their machines to the smaller scale required for the smaller package dimensions or for the manufacturer of the decal sheets to change the arrangement of the tax stamps on the rolls. Further, since the application of stamps is normally a job that is performed by small distributors or jobbers in small, local areas, the cost of any new machines required to handle such small quantities of cigarettes could not be justified economically. These difficulties were overcome, however, by the tax stamp applying machine described and claimed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 678,263 of Max Norris Baker and Julian Martin, filed on Apr. 19, 1976 and entitled "Machine for Applying Transfers", now U.S. Pat. No. 4,101,362, issued July 18, 1979, and assigned to the assignee of the present application.
The transfer applying machine of the copending application provided a unit in which cartons of cigarettes are advanced sequentially through an opening station, a stamping station, and a closing station formed along a guide chute, the chute being adjustable to accommodate all lengths of cigarettes. The cartons are placed in the chute with the packages lying on their sides, so that the ends to which the stamps or transfers are to be applied are in a generally vertical plane. A transfer sheet is located adjacent the guide chute with two rows of transfers being aligned with the two rows of packages in the carton. A drive mechanism for the conveyor intermittently advances cartons in spaced relationship to the guide chute, each carton being halted at the stamping station long enough for the stamps or transfers to be applied. The conveyor is in the form of a drive chain which includes a plurality of spacer blocks which are selected as to size and/or position on the chain so as to properly position each carton in turn in alignment with the stamps which are to be applied from the transfer sheet when the chain stops. These blocks are secured at spaced locations along the chain and by utilizing various sizes, which may be replaceably secured to the drive chain, the location at which each carton in turn stops in the stamping station may be selected with great precision and without the need for adjusting the interconnection between the drive mechanism and the chain.
The transfer mechanism for the machine of the copending application includes a heated platen mounted for reciprocating motion in a horizontal plane toward and away from the exposed ends of the cigarette packages in the open cartons. When a carton is properly positioned for the transfer operation, the platen is moved forward into contact with the back surface of the decal sheet, the platen contacting the sheet at spaced areas corresponding to the location of the first set of transfers on the sheets and driving them into contact with the individual packages of cigarettes in the carton. The platen holds the transfer sheet in contact with the packages momentarily, allowing the tax stamps to be transferred, and then withdraws. The carton is then moved to the closing station, another carton is moved into the printing station, and the operation repeated. However, before a subsequent transfer is carried out, the platen is adjusted laterally to align with a second set of transfers on the sheet, and because of the small size of the packages, the position of the carton must be adjusted to correspond to this lateral motion and to align with the new packages with the second set. The spacer blocks accomplish this carton positioning so that the second set of transfers is properly located with respect to the cigarette packages. After three cartons or so are stamped, a first stamping cycle, wherein all of the transfers in the initial two rows of the sheet will have been applied, is complete, and the transfer sheet is advanced to position two more rows in the transfer station. A second cycle of operation follows, wherein the transfers of the second pair of rows are applied in sets, with the platen being adjusted laterally in the opposite direction for alignment with the appropriate sets, the platen returning to its initial position at the end of the second cycle. The machine then continues to operate repetitively through these two cycles.
Although the machine described in the copending application Ser. No. 678,263 solved many of the problems of the prior art and allowed the application of tax stamps to a wide variety of cigarette package sizes, nevertheless in the operation of that machine certain difficulties were encountered. In particular, it was found that the design of that machine unduly limited the speed at which tax stamps could be applied to the cigarette packages, for it was found that the extra step of tilting the cartons over on their sides prior to the opening and stamping operations imposed an additional step in the sequence of operation, and this additional step was found to be a limiting factor in the speed at which the device could operate. Further, it was found that the pusher blocks used in the conveyor imposed additional limits on the speed at which the device could operate, for it was found that if the machine was operated too fast, the inertia of the cartons as they were carried into the stamping station would carry them beyond the desired stopping point so that when the chain drive stopped, the cartons would not. This caused serious problems of alignment, particularly with some sizes of cigarette packages where the spacing was already critical. Further, although the use of replaceable blocks of different sizes permitted accurate adjustment of the machine for various sizes of cigarette packages, nevertheless, it was found that the changing of the machine from one size to another was time consuming and often required experimentation before an accurate setting could be obtained. Finally, it was found that the machine as described and constructed was too bulky for ease in handling and installation. The weight and size of the machine created serious difficulties.